Monday, January 2, 2012

It took me a year to notice

During the course of 2011, I'd seen thousands of cards from the three main Topps issues (flagship, Series 2, and Update). I'd probably opened around a hundred packs or so of the product. I'd seen numerous amounts of scans from trade sites and other blogs.

Yet I managed to miss something.

Here's the back of the Adam LaRoche card I featured at the top of the post. You've got the basics for Topps card backs: team name, position, stats, short bio. But what's that at the far right of the card?

I can't believe I never noticed these little tidbits before. I'd flipped over many, many cards from 2011 Topps and failed to notice this on any of them.

But can you blame me? Look at how scrunched in this is in the full scan of the back. They're barely readable. From what I can gather, Nolan Ryan was #513 in the 1971 Topps set. Fascinating.

Was I the only one who didn't notice this?

I know I'll be scouring the backs of 2012 Topps a lot more thoroughly now. Hopefully I don't miss anything this time.